Official Unity plan pricing and packaging updates

He probably stuck on a random airplane somewhere on an empty airport or something.

 

Yes. The bigger your game and higher it's price, the better this deal is. AAA devs will not flitch at this deal (ignoring the nonsense of Unity making up their own install numbers, and the impracticalities of it, and the potential spyware injected into their games). As games get smaller and smaller towards the other end of the scale, including businesses that exist based on 2c per user ad driven freeware, this deal becomes impossible.

That's the stupidity of it - it's not scaled based on income but is a flat rate for everyone where not everyone is equal.

As I mentioned before, it's akin to taxing people based on hours worked. First 25 hours a week, no tax. 30% on the next 5 hours. 15% on the next 10. 10% on each hour after that. For those on minimum income needing to work 50 hours a week, they pay high tax. For those on $5000+ an hour, they just work 25 hours a week and don't get taxed. No sane country would operate tax that way. Why would Unity take that sort of approach, penalising the lowest earners, in their new monetisation strategy?!?! It makes no sense, charging highest on those who can least afford it. That's backwards to creating a healthy industry where any small player can grow into a big player with better returns for Unity.

 

unity wants to force the pay per install because its a lunatic metric. they will use it to give mobile devs the option to switch to their own ad network and so they try to damage their competitor that has a better standing. (and who wanted to merge with unity too, but they bought the cat in the sack).

if there is no official reaction and clearification then unity is considered to be dead

 

Very informative piece, explaining why Unity potentially did this: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unitys-self-combustion-engine-this-week-in-business

If this is truth - we're fu*ked. They won't let go, they just begun squeezing and they gonna squeeze hard.

 

And which user only installs the game once?
And do you get paid for every install as a developer?

 

I created a video to show people how to file a complaint against Unity with the FTC.

 

There remains to be glaring issues.
1: There is no way to hold you accountable for the install count because we as devs won't know it and your not detailing exactly how your getting the data in the first place.
2: You still have the ability to raise the price whenever you want. So today is 20 cents but what February is 30 or a dollar per install. Additionally, no product or service you provide is safe from your random price hikes.
3: Because you go off of gross profits we only need a 10 or 20 thousand in sales for a 15 dollar game to hit that money threshold which is pretty low.
4: Due to that sales threshold being so easy to hit now since its gross things like sales, free weekend, or price drops are extremely disincentivized. For marketing sense doing a free weekend to launch the game would be great but now it just increases installs with no money return.

Closing thoughts:
Unity is just another S***ty company trying there best to extract as much money from their consumer as possible. However, Unity will hide behind the quote that it only impacts 10% of the user base (do you expect us to trust you with that stat?), they will hide behind the fact its still cheaper than Unreal (for now), and tell people they don't understand what's happening. When at the end of the day their goal is to placate as many people as possible so they can implement this and hike price later.

I know it won't happen but I see a lot of other people want this and I agree:
- Regain trust by firing current CEO
- Roll back all this bullshit
- if you want to make more money first fix half the bugs unity already has and add more feature in return next time

 

I don't understand why any of you are in favor of any revenue share at all. You are all crazy to me.

A rock musician buys a guitar and then they own whatever music they make with it.

A graphic designer buys Photoshop then they own whatever art they make.

A 3D team buys Maya and to make effects for a movie and then the movie studio owns the movie that results.

You don't have Fender guitars or Steinberg Cubase taking cuts of musicians creations or Maya expecting a cut of the box office and home DVD sales. JK Rowling doesn't pay Microsoft per sale because she wrote her books in Word.

You guys are accepting something you should not be. These companies are NOT entitled to a cut of your revenue. You bought a software license and package to make your own games. They are YOUR GAMES.

If Unity or Unreal are claiming otherwise YOU DO NOT OWN YOUR GAME.

Do you not see the fundamental problem with this? The curve of death is one. The possibility for them to change TOS any time is another. Shutting down and firing a global kill switch is another.

I went with Unity for the flat fee because I believe they deserve to be paid, but I do NOT believe they own the creations I make with their software even at ANY percentage point.

If I was a famous guitar player and every guitar company started doing this, I would go down to the lumber yard and start grinding a piece of maple to make my own guitar or hire someone local to make one for me.

And so I am doing the equivalent which as I see it is the only possible result. I cannot spent the next 10 years with my designs not just "made with Unity" but OWNED by Unity.

Both Unity and Unreal are completely wrong and neither approach should be acceptable. The open source options are going to become the new Blender if they can't grasp this.

 

Yes

 

"With Unity, it's capped. It's $75 a month or $1,500 for a perpetual license; we're not nickel-and-diming people and we're not charging them a royalty. When we say it's free, it's free. When we say $75 a month, it's $75 a month. Yeah, you can buy other stuff from us. We're not a one-trick pony, but we're not charging a royalty, which I think is akin to looking for whales."

John Riccitiello, 2015

 

Does anyone know of a way we can monitor people adopting Godot / Unreal since this started? I know the Godot subreddit had tripled by yesterday. But anyone know anymore reliable data points?

 

To those who think this is justifiable and decide to stick with Unity:

I respect your thoughts and decision and I want to invest in your game projects.

My terms of investment are as follows: I will get half of your revenue, but in return, I will make an investment in cash right after we sign the agreement. The amount of money I invest will be determined by me. I will calculate a magic number and I will multiply this magic number by 100. But if you accept my offer today, I'll multiply it by 150.

 

https://twitter.com/skutteoleg/status/1702753403300892913

 

You only pay for 1 install per sale. If is per multi install per user, one user could install uninstall and ruin you.
In fact Unity could do this to earn money )

 

Appreciate your input and understand your position, and really hate that hard working, inspiring Unity employees are caught up in all this.

However that Twitter thread is a terrible example, to which I'd already replied to several of their points showing what bad takes they are. Not to mention it fails to address the key issues that have really angered your users, causing the biggest loss of trust with a company I've ever seen, that being TOS changes that retroactively change the rules for past games, and that Unity are willing to change the TOS to whatever suits them and charge whatever they like not on the editor, but on the production of developers efforts, whilst instigating a sudden move away from the USP of a flat upfront fee.

Tweet ( its a link )
~80% (est.) of Unity users don't pay anything for the service.
Unity's ads business (highly profitable) funds the engine business
The engine business is not profitable standalone​

This is categorical wrong, or at least the wrong way to look at it!

• The engine business facilitates users to build games that incorporate the profitable Unity ads!
• Users who don't pay for the service, are paying directly with their hard work, time and money into making those same games, that incorporate the profitable Unity ads.
• Without these users there would be NO profitable Unity ads business!
• In essence Unity is not giving these users the editor for free, the users are providing Unity the games to run a profitable ads business within!

Tweet ( its a link )
I don't disagree wrt royalty rev model. The reason they didn't was because its challenging to track/enforce​

Hold on if its challenging to track/enforce a royalty model, presumably because of knowing companies revenue, how does the new system work when it MUST not only track revenue ( for threshold ) but also install count too? It is literally many times more difficult and doesn't remove the royalty challenge at all!


I didn't really dive into some of the examples they gave beyond the first 'cherry picked' Per-install isn't really that bad tweet, or how the fees adversely affect low priced games more than high price games, or high volume game vs lower volume games, effectively destroy several different type of business strategy's that game companies have to use to make money.

Neither did I go into more details about how pay per install is fundamentally flaw, more so than all the initial points that were raised by people in this thread, because we keep find further edge cases, such as

• How will Unity be able to differentiate someone installing a purchase in January from someone reinstalling the purchase they made in December?
• What happens if users purchase a game but do not install it for months or years later? If in a large enough number ( say from a bundle sale ) this could be a ticking time bomb for developers.

At every level this plan is flawed.

 

I mean ... I said it before and I say it again:
1. Everybody who is fine with revenue sharing is more than welcome to use any OpenSource engine and give back a part of the revenues. In an amount of your own chosing, nevertheless. Or even better help with official tools battle tested in actual games.
2. Open Source software unlike every proprietary Software will not vanish from your reach for reasons like EULA changes or even being pulled from the market. They may stall. They may develop in an unwanted direction. But true Open Source software under any FOSS license will never completely vanish from being used. Never bar you from accessing your own created work.

And this is inherent to ANY proprietary software. Look at Softimage. Look at Marvelous Designer's convoluted new price policy. Look at where Unity started out and where we are at, now ...

----- *deep sigh

It was a fun ride guys. Nice seeing that some of the same people I saw here years and years ago are still here.

To anyone deep in a project they cannot abandon at the moment: I truly feel for you and I hope things turn out fine for you or you'll find a solution you can live with.
To all Unity devs who also never wanted this to happen: I'm sorry. Seeing your company, work and workplace deteriorate by the forces who should be there to make it thrive is more than discouraging. I know that all too well.

And with that I think I'm out of here.
See you on the other side, wherever that may be.

the_motionblur - signing off

 

Really hope for success but that you do not go above the threshold before 2024.01.01 so that you still get most of it.

 

A bit long summary what happened so far from Yong Yea.

 

Oh wait I forgot! Now I have to pay 2k a year to remove the splash screen since unity plus is no more... Unbelievable.
You know what, I REALLY like this engine, and the people that work on it, and I would have been willing to pay more for it to continue to grow. But this F***ing attitude! Management needs to apologize and leave.

 

No open source engine can acheive capabilities of UE as of yet and years to come .

 

exactly. so your math is wrong.
Your math is based on 1 install per sale, and that just won't happen.
Unity can claim otherwise, but they cannot track this without breaking any form of privacy laws.

 

He states that unity has about 3k devs working on it, so what do the other 5k do, just sit around and create invoices?

 

But depending on the game price can loose millions that way, as Unreal fee can be exponentially larger.

Is not a bingo, will always loose vastly more from Unreal and nearly nothing from Unity if the game price is above $0.02 and is very successful.

 

.... this is wrong.

 

As for me, personally:

- Unity remains installed until I have clients to serve with it
- Installed
-- Stride Engine
-- Flax Engine
-- Unreal Engine
-- Unigine too (although I doubt this one, but wants to be thorough)
- Over the weekend I will decide where to port/move my personal projects.

 

I've been trying to remember any recent controversies in open source, and I finally managed to remember. Moq was a mocking framework for C# that introduced DRM.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...t-moq-criticized-for-quietly-collecting-data/

 

What happens when your game gets featured in xbox gamepass/ psplus/ epicgames free month and gets 1m downloads/install after that? $200k bill?

 

1. Thanks for someone trying to cut through the marketing speak that is a company announcement/response.
2. While this is reassuring... in the sense that perhaps this isn't going to be misused...
3. Unity would do well to clarify this _in the contract_ and _terms of use_ and _eula_.

Anything the company responds with is feel good. What is in the legal paperwork and actual process that the company will labor under is more important. :/

 

No its not reassuring and not helpful at all. Know why? Because everything they say is based on made up pie-in-the-sky magical wishlist of how they say it will work. In reality they have no way to do ANY of what they are describing. It is going to be a hot mess. And if you trust it to be accurate you are in for a world of hurt.

One simple example that shoots down the entire post - they say they wont count charity bundle installs. How? They can't say. Because it's not possible. They just knee-jerk added that clause on day 2 of this S***storm to try to get everyone to calm down after someone pointed it out. They have NO PLAN and NO ABILITY. They are making it up as they go based on Twitter replies.

If anyone thinks it is possible to not count charity installs I'd love to hear how. Even if they could theoretically track the very first install after the charity sale (they can't) how will they track a reinstall 1,2,5,10 years later from that same sale? Especially on different devices, etc. Such bullshit its almost comical if it wasnt our livelihoods at stake.

Give me a F***ing break.

This is totally unacceptable!!

 

Not really, you just wont pay and take it to court, with your actual numbers and obviously win saying Unity did the obvious fraud.

I dont think Unity wants to have million of losable lawsuits in its hands or they are so naive.

 

IDK if this was linked before or not, but this is epic (with small letters!):

https://twitter.com/F***edByUnity
​

Obviously you will need to solve the *** part of the URL. It's not hard, very popular word on this thread. UCK if you don't get it.

 

If only I hadn't permanently closed my Twitter account. I'm missing so many interesting posts.

 

I have two Microsoft xbox accounts on my xbox cause I share my games on a second Xbox, so on my secondary account if I play a Unity games with the secondary account will it charge the developer for the runtime fee aside from the primary account runtime fee on both Xbox’s that would be a charge of four times for one purchased game- so if I defrag my Xbox’s and reinstall is thats even more charges and not sure how many accounts Microsoft will share on Xbox but I have two

 

We already know how price differences will play out in the long run. The problem is that no Unity infrastructure can provide per-installation pricing. In this case, we may be faced with funny and unfair figures.

 

Definitely nailed it

 

I agree completely and now I am just watching the car wreck of what was once a beautiful thing.

I would rather pay $50,000 to an open source project to get something fixed or added I need than pay any amount to a company that openly states I don't even own anything I make with their software.

F***ed up, man. Good luck to everyone.

 

Didn't realize twitter isn't available publicly anymore. F*** Elon too.
Just a little bit of taster:

 

I'm not going to try searching for the exact post, but I remember when it started to become apparent that you could make big bucks with iPhone games (if you got lucky), someone asked Unity something like "What if I end up making $10 million and I only paid you $3000 for Unity + Unity iPhone Pro licenses?" (They were separate apps at the time.) And Unity's response was basically, "Great! We're here to make the tools, you're the one making the game."

--Eric

 

This makes casual games not viable, these mostly earn from ADs. Some people have shown that they will go on deficit after this. Even big company games, if the numbers I've acquired with information isn't wrong.

Also, not even big companies can stop bot ad views, and we are talking that they manage the money of twitter/fb/google/etc not Unity. If you are targeted, your revenue is totally done and you go bankrupt because of fake installs. I know it's a good incentive for creators to increase revenue per install (you're almost telling them to do it), though it's plain wrong for some game revenue models. I'm totally sure this is going to be reverted. Just get a cut of revenue.

 

I know I previously said this thread had reached its natural conclusion, but maybe we should push for 200 before it dies?

 

thanks for posting here

personally there's a few things i've realized from here and Reddit (might be behind the curve already / correct me if im wrong)

1. Unity has big financial crisis right now, and has to generate more cash to survive. Losing $2bn a year and $3bn in debt. Specifically, Engine division is the big lossmaker. If new cash isnt generated, all of this becomes irelevant (obvs this should have been public thing, try to rally / educate the community)

2. There is an actual strategy being played out here to avert the financial crisis... plug the hole by tapping-up specifically large mobile studios, whom are paying basically nothing for the engine but making bank on ads through third party (AppLovin), by migrating them to LevelPlay

3. Seems like Ironsource actually was early part of this strategy for LevelPlay - provides the inhouse ad platform Unity can use to capture the ad revenue to reverse the profitability crisis. and technically it is a profitable division (love it or hate it)

Only problem was... LevelPlay isn't as good as Applovin so mobile devs aren't using it.

Hence finding a way to push them onto in-house ads, by creating artificial headline costs with the RT fee, but planning to basically allow mobile devs to avoid by moving back to LevelPlay (whilst not actually stating this fully upfront)

And with the management, yeah this has been dealt with really badly from communication and planning point, but at this point i dont think they are just sitting back / not caring at all, they have a strategy to solve the problem, its just none of us like the strategy

So personally i dont like the install fee same as pretty much everyone else, and its a blocker for me if it stays as it is. But for those who want to stay with Unity (which personally, if there were no chance of RT fees i probably would as its the mobile engine i like), the financial problem is a real thing and how to solve that.

 

Did you? Did you delete it or you forgot the second account?

 

Thanks sir.mac on Discord for sharing this one, https://twitter.com/danielsantalla/status/1702542489733775539
Screenshot for those unable to view it.. available until deleted by somebody with no sense of humor:


..maybe it's actually a whistleblower reveal of new editor workspace changes coming soon for anyone not on Pro

 

I mean if you're feeling generous and want to give back you can always donate/invest/buy stock.

 

who said? i don't know if it's funny or sad...



https://www.gamesindustry.biz/theres-no-royalties-no-f-ing-around-riccitiello

 

Yet Another Unity Tax Calculation (for Personal, flat tax rate of USD 0.2, PC premium game)



What you think?

p.s. Caveat: this is a consolidated view, cashflow-wise through it's a whole different story...

 

I came back here after years of inactivity on the forums to shout that this whole thing is incredibly super mega ultra sh|tty. What a breach of trust by the new leaders of Unity.

 

Um ... allegedly ... neither confirm nor deny ...

 

this is the code I got in this thread somewhere else to disable analytics on build:

Code (CSharp):

1. #if UNITY_EDITOR
2.     using UnityEditor;
3.     using UnityEditor.Experimental;
4.     using UnityEditor.Build;
5.     using UnityEngine;
6.     using UnityEditor.Build.Reporting;
7.    
8.     class BuildPreprocessor : IPreprocessBuildWithReport
9.     {
10.     public int callbackOrder { get { return 0; } }
11.    
12.     public void OnPreprocessBuild(BuildReport report)
13.     {
14.       Debug.Log("Preprocessing...");
15.    
16.       SerializedObject _unityConnectSettingsAsset = new SerializedObject(EditorResources.Load<Object>("ProjectSettings/UnityConnectSettings.asset"));
17.    
18.       var _enabled = _unityConnectSettingsAsset.FindProperty("m_Enabled");
19.       _enabled.boolValue = false;
20.    
21.       var _b = _unityConnectSettingsAsset.FindProperty("UnityAnalyticsSettings").FindPropertyRelative("m_InitializeOnStartup");
22.       _b.boolValue = false;
23.    
24.       _unityConnectSettingsAsset.ApplyModifiedProperties();
25.       AssetDatabase.SaveAssets();
26.     }
27.     }
28. #endif
29.  

save it as "BuildPreprocessor.cs" in your assets folder and it should disable the analytics on the build.
I haven't tried myself and it won't prevent Unity from sending you an estimated bill based on their crystal ball though, so be careful.
It would be nice if someone could test it with a network analyzer.

 

I for one salute our new overlords. Pray they don't alter the deal further.